Bank, FMCG stocks drag Sensex 200 points lower; Nifty below 19,000
The BSE Sensex was trading 168 points or 0.26% lower at 63,614. Nifty50 was trading at 19,003, down 43 points or 0.23% at around 9.18 a.m.
From the Sensex stocks, Power Grid, Bajaj Finserv, M&M, Tata Motors, Bajaj Finance, and Titan opened with cuts, while Reliance Industries, Tech Mahindra, Maruti, and UltraTech Cement opened with cuts.
Among individual stocks, SBI Card fell nearly 7% after the company missed the September quarter profit view as financial costs weighed.
IRB Infrastructure Developers shares rose 5% after the associate company received a letter of award (LoA) from NHAI for Rs 4,428 crore.
Sector-wise, Nifty Auto declined 1.06%, and Nifty Consumer Durables fell 0.90%. Banks, financial, FMCG, IT, media, and metal sectors also opened lower.
In the broader market, Nifty Midcap100 plunged 0.69%, and Smallcap100 fell 0.40%.
Meanwhile, caution over the Middle East conflict prevailed after Israel said it hit over 450 Hamas targets on Sunday and self-declared «second phase» of the attack on the Hamas militants.
Experts Take
«The risk of the Middle East geopolitical crisis spreading is high and since the ground war has begun in Gaza there can be lots of uncertainty and unexpected developments.The other major factor impacting the markets -the elevated US bond yields- also will remain a short term concern since the Fed is likely to continue its hawkish stance in the light of the resilience of the US economy and inflation (3.7%) remaining above the Fed’s target,» said V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.
Deven Mehata, Research Analyst at Choice Broking, said, «According to the charts Nifty may be taking support at 18,950, followed by 18,900 and 18,850. On the higher side,
